Osgood Tries to Exit Osborne

For longtime CBS newscaster Charles Osgood, one of the perks of living at the Osborne in Midtown Manhattan is not having to wait in line at a certain nearby concert hall.

"This is smack dab across the street from Carnegie Hall," said Mr. Osgood of the landmark building at West 57th Street and Seventh Avenue. "Sometimes at intermission, the lines at the restroom or at the bar are long and it's quicker to go out the door and into our door to use our own bathroom and drink our own liquor."

Longtime CBS newscaster Charles Osgood owns this two-floor apartment at the Osborne in Midtown Manhattan that combines four units, sits across from Carnegie Hall and is for sale for just under $7 million dollars. WSJ's Maya Pope-Chappell reports.

Before moving into the building, Mr. Osgood often passed by the Osborne on his way to work at the CBS Broadcast Center and lingered to peer at the ornate lobby. He was also intrigued by the co-op building's storied past—it was completed in 1885 and is one of the city's first luxury apartment buildings.

To cut down on his commute from Englewood, N.J., where he and his wife, Jean, lived at the time, he decided to purchase a pied-à-terre at the Osborne more than 10 years ago. A few years later, the couple decided to move back to the city full-time, trading up for a larger co-op on the third floor.

The Osgoods at the Osborne

A library and bar room adjoin the living room, which has wall-to-wall bookshelves and a loft area, above. Natalie Keyssar for The Wall Street Journal

By 2006, the couple had added three more units for a two-floor apartment comprising 12 rooms and roughly 4,400 square feet of living space.

Stripping layers of paint to restore the woodwork underneath "was much more of a production" compared to the work it took to combine the four apartments, said Mr. Osgood.

The seven-bedroom co-op has 14-foot ceilings, original mahogany woodwork, patterned oak parquet flooring and pocket doors. In the kitchen, there's even a second stove that dates from the late 1800s.

"There's a serene and stately kind of feeling," said Mr. Osgood of the home's interiors.

Though Mr. Osgood likes each room in the apartment, the library is marked by a special name—it references the 1964 film "My Fair Lady."

"We think of that as our Henry Higgins room," he said of the library, which has dark wood shelving and a spiral staircase that leads to a balcony overlooking the room and the dining room on the other side.

The couple, who have five grown children, initially listed the home in 2009 for $7.9 million under a different brokerage. Agent Victoria Ghilaga of Stribling Private Brokerage took over the listing in April. The price was reduced to $6.9 million.

The 78-year-old Mr. Osgood, who still hosts his daily radio show, "The Osgood File," and anchors the "CBS News Sunday Morning" television broadcast, plans to spend more time at the couple's second home in the south of France.

"What we bought is a decade of very nice living," Mr. Osgood said. "If we sell it for less than what we put into it with the various renovations and construction, I still feel we got a great value."

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